City Honors Jintian Liang and Christopher Hinds, Seniors at American Indian Charter

Jintian Liang (left) and Christopher Hinds, Seniors at American Indian Charter.

Jintian Liang and Christopher Hinds, both seniors at American Indian Public High School, were recognized at this week’s week City Council meeting for winning prestigious national awards for academic achievement. Liang was nominated for the 2013 U. S. Presidential Scholars Program, an honor that goes to only 141 graduating high school seniors nationally. Liang is the only Oakland public school student to be nominated. Hinds was named a 2013 National Achievement Scholarship Program Finalist. The program is an academic competition that was established in 1964 to provide recognition for outstanding Black American high school students. Liang will be the first member of his family to attend college. His future academic goals include attending Stanford University, where he plans to study computer science, According to Liang, his school “has many great teachers who are willing to stay after school and assist students with various subjects. The student community here is also pretty spectacular. Everywhere you look, you will find support, support, and more support.” Hinds will be the first one of his siblings to attend college. His top choices for college are Brown University or John Hopkins University, where he plans to study medicine, He says his school “taught me to be more organized and taught me how to be a hard worker. It has also taught me to be more confident in my abilities.” Responding to a number of management issues at the school, the Oakland Board of Education voted recently to close the school at the end of the school year. Councilmember Desley Brooks, who read the resolution honoring the two students, urged the school district to work with the school to find a way to keep it open. The American Indian Public High School serves 285 inner-city students in ninth through twelfth grades, and is as one of the top high schools in Oakland and California, and within the top 100 schools in America. The focus of the school is excellent student attendance (99.5%), which helps to ensure the academic needs of all students who attend the school. The curriculum has been designed to enhance the academic skills of socio-economically disadvantaged students Paul Cobb, Oakland Post publisher and former school board member, led the support for starting the school while he served on the board. He said he was going to lead an effort to keep the school in Oakland. “If we can spend prodigious amounts of money and energy to keep the A’s, the Raiders and the Warriors, why can’t we expend the same efforts to keep a school that is making such a difference in the lives of students in our community,” said Cobb.